Auburn Affirmation: During the transition of 19th and 20th century, there was a Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. The historical Christianity was in a fight for its life and almost lost it. The fight was between Christian Fundamentalists who wanted to preserve the historical Christian faith and the fundamental of the Gospel and Modernists who wanted to reinterpret the Scripture into present day culture by implementing new philosophical ideas.

In 1923, Northern Presbyterian Church of America held fundamentalist General Assembly. Robert Hastings Nichols, a history professor at Auburn Theological Seminary circulated a paper that argued the Old School-New School reunion of 1870 and aftermath  of merging with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of 1906 had established a church which had specific purpose to accommodate doctrinal diversity within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

Two weeks after the General Assembly, 36 fundamental clergymen issued five fundamental affirmations as a test of orthodoxy in essence of the historical Christian faith on the basis of Prof. Nichol’s paper.

1. Inerrancy of the Scriptures (authority of the Scripture)

2. The virgin birth

3. The doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement

4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ

5. The authenticity of Christ’s miracles

Note: taken out of lectures on Doctrine II class notes of 2009